Clay & Paper Theatre has many costumes and puppets available for the public to wear in the parade. Come early to the Dufferin Grove Park Rink clubhouse to avoid disappointment!

Dress Code: “Black & White & Dreadful”

Admission: Pay-What-You-Can/ $10 suggested

From the organizers: This year's Big Fear of the Year is The Fear of Them and Us.

What will happen when Them and Us come face to face? Clay & Paper Theatre master puppet builders and mask makers will be joined by many volunteers to make 120 life-sized masks and two giant masks come to life for this year’s raucous celebration.
All are welcome to help us build imagery, masks, puppets and shrines for the event. Free! No experience necessary.

Making: We need many hands and many volunteers to make this year’s Night of Dread the most dreadful yet! Drop by or contact us for other ways to get involved!

Clay and Paper Theatre: Twenty Years in Dufferin Grove Park

In 1994, the Dufferin Grove Park had a little problem. The south side of the field house, out of the sight lines of St.Mary’s High School, had become an unofficial “marijuana club.” And those fellows who gathered there daily were not the dreamy kind of weed smokers. When they got high, they got energetic. The park’s main drinking fountain, used by teams who were playing field sports, was located where the “club” met. The fountain was vandalized and pushed over so many times that finally the Parks maintenance staff just put a danger fence around it and left it lying on the ground.

That year, David Anderson of Clay and Paper Theatre was looking for a garage where he could store some of the theatre’s papier-mache puppets.

Some park friends asked him if he might be interested in moving the puppets, and his puppet-making materials, into the unused park field house instead. The idea was that if Clay and Paper used the field house not only for storage but also as a workshop, there would be “eyes on the park” – and on the marijuana club. Park friends proposed the idea to the Parks and Recreation director. He thought it was worth trying. David moved his puppets in, and he started building new puppets with his group. The field house soon became a draw for people to drop by and watch what the theatre people were making.

That wholesome scene seemed to make the marijuana club guys feel they were suddenly in the wrong movie. They soon stopped coming there. The drinking fountain was relocated and repaired, so the players on the sports field could once again quench their thirst.

That’s how easily a problem could be fixed in pre-amalgamation days, before the city administration was so big. And the fix didn’t stop there. Clay and Paper began to add spectacle to the park, bringing much more in return for their puppet-making space than had been asked. Over the last twenty years they’ve presented original plays, a new one almost every year. There was a year when fire (as in bake-ovens) was the theme, another year it was finance (and Wal-Mart), another year it was the Portuguese hero and poet Camoes. Up to now there have been 19 original plays, drawing in actors and musicians and visual artists. The troupe is mostly student artists, many of them hired through the Canada Summer Jobs program. (The program relies on the federal MP’s support and is often announced at the last possible moment – a cliff-hanger for Clay and Paper’s rehearsal schedule.)

David says there have been unexpected adventures over the past 20 years. One year there happened to be political demonstrations downtown in front of the U.S. Consulate. Back at the park, when the giant puppets came out for the park’s annual Clay and Paper production, the police showed up – on horseback and with backups. It took a little while for the troupe to convince them that this was a play, not an outlier anarchist demonstration bound for the consulate. And there was another year when a robbery scene in Clay and Paper’s play about finance (called “Gold”) seemed so real to a passerby in the park that he called 911. The Fourteen Division gang squad came out very fast (and sized up the situation and left).

Of course, Clay and Paper hasn’t only been doing performances, they also put on the yearly “Night of Dread” community parade, always on the Saturday before Hallowe’en. Some years there have been a thousand people taking part. David Anderson recalls that one year, when he set off with the band and the police escort, and the parade started to leave the park, a stranger marched up to the other end of the crowd, held up a banner, and summoned people to follow him. So the parade started off in two opposite directions. Anderson had to stop the parade, remove the “parade thief,” and get the parade going back the right way.

This year an unexpected, rather painful “adventure” has caused the summer play’s opening to be postponed by a week. A cast member smashed her knee cap in a bike accident three days before the original opening date, and another cast member was sidelined with pneumonia. So the play had to be quickly rejigged for the new circumstaces, and new rehearsals were needed. The opening date is Saturday August 2.

August 2 to August 17th, 2014: CLAY & PAPER THEATRE presents Animal Nature: Wednesday through Sunday @ 8:00pm. Director David Anderson sends this quote from writer Farley Mowat:“…our failure [is] to understand, to recognize, to celebrate our non-humanity, our animality… if we could overcome this failure and come to terms with our animalilty, there may be some hope.”

The new show is inspired by Mowat’s quote. Here is the company description: “Clay & Paper Theatre’s 2014 summer show is an epic papier-mâché tale of the search for the way home. Animal Nature is filled with a decidedly Canadian mélange of creature characters and giant puppets on a fateful journey through Dufferin Grove Park. Owl, Caribou, Possum, Grizzly, Orca and Humanimal have been displaced from their homes and must address the deceptively simple question “How did we get here?” Provocative puppetry at its best, Animal Nature is brimming with original design, music, dance, and signature Clay & Paper Theatre satire and wit gone awry. With its cast of puppet tricksters and merrymakers, Animal Nature rallies audiences to embrace their inner animals, to revel in the beauty of the earth and to find the way home together.”

July 23rd to August 17th, 2014: CLAY & PAPER THEATRE presents Animal Nature: Wednesday through Sunday @ 8:00pm, Previews July 16th to 20th. Director David Anderson sends this quote from writer Farley Mowat: “…our failure [is] to understand, to recognize, to celebrate our non-humanity, our animality… if we could overcome this failure and come to terms with our animalilty, there may be some hope.”

The new show is inspired by Mowat’s quote. Here is the company description: “Clay & Paper Theatre’s 2014 summer show is an epic papier-mâché tale of the search for the way home. Animal Nature is filled with a decidedly Canadian mélange of creature characters and giant puppets on a fateful journey through Dufferin Grove Park. Owl, Caribou, Possum, Grizzly, Orca and Humanimal have been displaced from their homes and must address the deceptively simple question “How did we get here?” Provocative puppetry at its best, Animal Nature is brimming with original design, music, dance, and signature Clay & Paper Theatre satire and wit gone awry. With its cast of puppet tricksters and merrymakers, Animal Nature rallies audiences to embrace their inner animals, to revel in the beauty of the earth and to find the way home together.” For more information: facebook/clay and paper

This Sunday, June 22nd from 2 to 5pm, in Dufferin Grove Park, Day of Delight. For more event info: Facebook Event Page

MusiCamp 2014

A full day (9am-4pm) camp for 8-14 year olds.
MuisCamp is a creative summer day camp experience that explores music making in a positive environment, filled with activities that build your child's musical skills (and host of other intellectual and social skills associated with music making) in an intuitive and fun way.